Prince's Family Files A Wrongful-Death Lawsuit

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Prince’s Family Files A Wrongful-Death Lawsuit

Prince’s family has officially filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the Illinois hospital that treated the superstar following his opioid overdose approximately a week before his untimely death.

This lawsuit attempts to question the care that Prince received at the hospital when his flight home from an Atlanta show was forced to make an emergency landing in Illinois. In the suit, the family alleges that the Trinity Medical Center in Illinois was a “direct and proximate cause” for the singer’s death, because they allegedly didn’t appropriately diagnose and treat his overdose.

When Prince’s private plane made the emergency landing, his friend Kirk Johnson informed paramedics that he had taken a Percocet after his show. Nicole Mancha, the doctor who treated the singer at the hospital, questioned the amount he was said to have digested, since it took two shots of Narcan to revive him.

Trinity Medical Center medical staff are said to have told the star that they could not let him leave unless they knew what he had taken, but Prince left the hospital after refusing to undergo further testing.  Before leaving, a pharmacist at the hospital allegedly confirmed that the pill Prince had in his possession was Vicodin–but it later turned out to be a black market version, containing high levels of fentanyl. One week later, Prince died of a fentanyl overdose.

Walgreens is listed within the lawsuit because the pharmacy was allegedly responsible for providing Prince with the opioid medication, and they “failed to conduct the appropriate drug utilization review.”